Tri County football team rallies around sidelined teammate

DE WITT, NE — The Tri County senior class has looked forward to the 2020 football season since they first took the field as third graders.  Many started as freshmen and built the Trojans from a one-win team to a state title contender.

But just weeks before the first game, a freak accident gave their senior season a greater meaning than a state championship.

“I knew instantly that something was wrong," Tri County senior Lucas Weise said. "I mean, I was really freaking out and instantly thought towards seasons, like football season and basketball season.”

These are the moments Lucas Weise was thinking about when he was drifting in a backyard pool, unable to move anything from the shoulders down.

“I was awake for the whole thing," Weise said. "I got pulled out and EMTs arrived and just took me straight to Lincoln.”

He had hit his head on the bottom of an above-ground pool in a fun dive gone wrong. Lucas went to the Bryan West Trauma Center… his teammates went to football camp the next day.

“No one knew what was going to be the extent of that injury," senior QB Cole Siems said. "All we could do was hope for the best right then. We were all scared for him.”

Doctors discovered that Lucas chipped a vertebra and stretched his spinal cord.  He went from leading his team in catches, to facing a long road to maybe regaining feeling and movement below his shoulders.  Coaches broke the news to the players during a team meeting.

“That’s when it really started to click for everyone that he was going to be our biggest fan on the sideline and he was going to be one of the strongest players we have on the team,” Siems said.

At first he was a fan from a hospital bed, watching live streams of games during his two-month stay at Madonna Rehabilitation. Then, he surprised the team by showing up on the sidelines on his first day out of in-patient care. He hasn’t missed a game since.  Head Coach Brett Scheiding says Lucas inspires the team.

“They used that as a rallying cry," Scheiding said. "They realized that when they were hurting a little bit, or felt like they just couldn’t get through a practice, they remembered Lucas, they reminded each other of Lucas and what he was working through so it was motivation pretty much from the start.”

The inspiration goes both ways. The team visited at the hospital, then sold shirts to raise funds for the family. They presented a check to Lucas’ mom Annette at a team dinner. She credits Lucas’ teammates for his determination to get better.

“He is strong because of them," Annette said. "Without their support and without those visits, and the texts, and the Snapchats and everything - it would be more difficult. They give strength."

Now, Tri County is a win away from the State Championship game… and a chance to complete a dream the senior class has shared since elementary school.

“Oh, it would be excitement and happiness that my guys used me as inspiration to make themselves better,” Lucas said.

Lucas says he’s starting to get some movement back in his fingers now.  He goes to physical therapy three times a week to work on getting better. But on Friday night, rehab will be far from his mind as the Trojans compete to make it to the State Championship game for the first time in school history.